If Vice President Joe Biden determines he will run for president, he’ll have hundreds more choices to make about how to structure and advance his campaign. One of the first pivotal decisions will be whether and how to break into the race in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Biden appears poised to announce a decision as early as this week, according to increasingly breathless national media reports. His decision, coming less than four months after the cancer death of his son Beau, has been described as entirely personal rather than driven by political considerations.

The political factors by now are far ahead of Biden. In Iowa, he would be months behind the leading candidates in setting up the sort of campaign infrastructure that can make a difference on caucus night. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are running neck-and-neck in some Iowa polls, with more than 30 field organizing offices between them and statewide networks of supporters.

A Draft Biden organization, which by law cannot be affiliated with any official Biden campaign, has two paid staff in Iowa and has listed more than a dozen current or former elected officials who would support his candidacy.

Even so, it was a surprise to read in The Hill that one of Biden’s longtime Iowa friends, Lowell Junkins, was suggesting the vice president “forget about the front of this thing” — skip Iowa and New Hampshire — and instead set up shop in Nevada and South Carolina.

I reached Junkins, a former state senator and 1986 gubernatorial candidate, on his cell phone as he was driving around Lee County, his home turf. He said he thinks Clinton and Sanders are too far ahead in building their campaign organizations. “It’s almost like remodeling a house. You have to tear it all down and then rebuild it,” he said.

Instead, he said, Biden could start in one of the states with contests after Iowa and start fresh.

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There may be a certain logic to that — if you ignore history. “That strategy doesn’t usually work for candidates,” noted state Rep. Bruce Hunter, a Biden supporter from Des Moines.

Indeed, the Jon Huntsman-Rudy Giuliani strategy of waiting for the train to arrive in a theoretically compatible state tends to leave the candidate trying to jump on a speeding locomotive. It’s a tried-and-true way to get left in the dust.

Hunter said the Draft Biden organization has started a framework for a campaign and noted that polls in Iowa have shown Biden as competitive. The most recent poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers, released Sunday by NBC News/Wall Street Journal, showed Biden with 22 percent. That’s 6 percentage points behind Sanders and 11 points behind Clinton. He also has shown strong support as a second choice of caucusgoers, which indicates room to grow.

However, that framework is perishable. “I don’t think he could wait too much longer before that … fizzles out,” Hunter said.

Rep. Lisa Heddens of Ames said she doesn’t believe Biden needs the level of organization he did last time he ran for president. Instead of being a little-known senator from Delaware, he’s the vice president whose positions on issues are well-known. “It’s a whole different ballgame than it was in 2008,” she said.

Biden’s appeal for supporters like Heddens and Hunter is the sense he’s always being himself. “Good or bad, Joe is Joe Biden. He’s the genuine deal,” Hunter said.

His supporters indicate they might forgive Biden if he decides his path to the nomination goes around Iowa, but they also might not sit on the sidelines. Heddens noted she had attended events for other candidates but hasn’t decided on a second choice if Biden stays out of the race.

History shows there are three, and sometimes four, tickets out of Iowa. Biden, without even announcing a campaign, is already in third place in the polls. Starting late against formidable competition also gives him the benefit of curbing the expectations a sitting vice president otherwise would have to win in Iowa. The party nominee needs another ticket out of Iowa and New Hampshire, both purple states, in November 2016.

Ultimately, though, Biden likely wouldn’t skip Iowa. Not because of what pundits or pollsters or strategists tell him, but because of people like Hunter and Heddens, like former state legislator Kevin McCarthy from Des Moines, Teri Goodmann from Dubuque and many others. He has made and maintained many friendships with these folks. They’re loyal, and so is Biden.